In this engaging segment, Cy Kellett welcomes Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin to tackle a question about God’s providence and protection over the Church throughout history. As they explore the early Church’s triumphs in the Acts of the Apostles and the challenges faced in later centuries, Jimmy offers insights on reconciling faith with the reality of sin and corruption, reminding us that the story of the Church is complex and multifaceted.
Transcript:
Caller: You look at the establishment of the early Church throughout the Acts of the Apostles and even into the first three centuries. And it seems like at that time frame, God’s Providence, his power and protection, is clearly front and center stage against protecting the Church from both heresy and corruption.
And then you get into this era of around 900 AD where there’s not just sin, but sin on a reprehensible and systematic level. And so my question is, you know, you read the Book of Acts and this is the Church you’re convinced this is the Church the gates of hell cannot prevail against. And then you read about the occurrences in 900 AD and you begin to question God’s protection and his providence over the Church.
And so my question is, how do you reconcile that as a believer, and how do you make sense of that?
Jimmy: Okay, well, I would make sense of it or reconcile it by noting a few different things. The first one is the Book of Acts is not a complete picture of the Church, even in the first century. Luke is writing to help Theophilus and other people appreciate Christianity and the Church in the Book of Acts. So he’s not going to go into scandals in the Church unless he has to. And for the most part, he doesn’t have to. So he doesn’t include those because they’re not part of his purpose for writing.
On the other hand, if you look at St. Paul’s letters, particularly 1st and 2nd Corinthians and also Galatians, he talks about more scandals in the Church because he has a different purpose in writing. He’s writing to people to help them through difficult situations in the Church. And so that forces Paul to go into scandalous material in a way that Luke is not required to, because they just have different purposes in writing.
So in building a picture of what was the Church like in the first century, I wouldn’t confine myself to just looking at the Book of Acts and saying, hey, it all looks great here. There’s other data that indicates there were problems in the early Church, some of them of a scandalous nature then.
So that’s part of how I would reconcile this. Then in looking at events later in church history, like you mentioned the 9th century, which would be the AD 800s, I’d even go a little bit later than that if you want to find the biggest scandals in church history. But you can point to popes like, let’s say, Benedict IX, and say, wow, what a rascal this guy was. He was clearly scandalous, but he’s also not the whole Church.
This is kind of the reverse problem of just focusing on Acts, which makes the Church look good. If you focus just on the scoundrels who were popes, well, then you’re just focusing on the data that makes the Church look bad. You’re not looking at the innumerable number of Christians who were very pious and sincere in their faith in later ages.
So it’s really comparing apples to oranges if you do this kind of thing. What I would say one needs to do in conducting this kind of analysis is look at the good and the bad in every age. And there is good and bad in every age.
So, you know, I would say we have evidence for problems in the Church in the first century. We also have evidence for great things in the Church in the first century. We have providence. We have problems in the Church in later ages, things in the Church in later ages.
But what God promised was not that we would have a problem-free experience of the Church. He promised that he would provide guidance to the Church such that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Meaning that the gates of hell is a reference to death. That’s what the gates of hell is. If you look in Isaiah, for example, or in other passages in the Old Testament, it talks about the gates of Hades or Hell being where people go when they die.
So when Jesus says the gates of Hell are not going to prevail against his Church, or the gates of Hades are not going to prevail against his Church, what he means is the Church is never going to die. And that means, among other things, it’s never going to fundamentally betray the Christian faith.
That’s not to say that an individual Pope may not, or that an individual set of bishops may not, or that individual members of the faithful may not. But there’s not going to be a total repudiation of the Christian faith. It’s going to continue to survive in the form of the Church.
And when you consider it that way, well, that’s what we see looking down through all 20 centuries of church history. There have been problems in every age. There have been great things in every age, but the Church has never had the gates of Hades prevail against it. It’s never died. It’s never totally repudiated its master and Lord Jesus Christ.
So we do have evidence for God guiding the Church throughout all of its history.
Caller: Profound and beautiful. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking my call, Billy.
Jimmy: Thank you very much. It was nice talking with you.
Cy: Let’s go to Danny in Iowa. Danny, thank you for waiting. Go ahead with your question for Jimmy.